Bill C-88 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act to establish an administration and enforcement scheme in Part 5 of that Act that includes the issuance of development certificates. It also adds an administrative monetary penalty scheme and a cost recovery scheme, provides regulation-making powers for both schemes and for consultation with Aboriginal peoples and it allows the Minister to establish a committee to conduct regional studies. Finally, it repeals a number of provisions of the Northwest Territories Devolution Act that, among other things, restructure the regional panels of the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, but that were not brought into force.
Part 2 of the enactment amends the Canada Petroleum Resources Act to allow the Governor in Council to prohibit certain works or activities on frontier lands if the Governor in Council considers that it is in the national interest to do so.

Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the previous Conservative speaker talk about the Liberals and the NDP and our positions on various government bills in this Parliament.

I take real issue with some of his commentary on Bill C-68. I represent a coastal riding, which is heavily dependent on wild salmon for its economy. Members do not have to take my word for it. Our opinion on Bill C-68 was actually formed from people who have spent their entire lives working as fisheries biologists. There is unanimous support in my riding for that. It is a rural riding. I will not take any lessons from the Conservatives about C-68 and rural communities. I represent a rural community. It is on the coast. It is dealing with a resource of wild salmon that directly affects the people who live in my riding.

On Bill C-88, I think the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay clearly elaborated to the House the testimony that we heard at committee from the people who are most directly affected by this legislation. I listened with great interest to his comments, particularly about the timeline that this bill is facing and that one first nations group was saying that it was either going to go through the courts or rely on this piece of legislation.

Given the mess that is happening in the other place right now where we are going to have government bills coming back to the House with Senate amendments, some bills having had trouble, does the member realistically think that Bill C-88, with the time that is left is going to see royal assent or is the government going to actually have to entertain the thought of bringing the House back in the summer months? Is that how much importance the government is going to attach to this bill?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. My riding is in the British Columbia interior where issues are different. We do not have that direct attachment to the sea, and yet my constituents certainly told me during the last election that these environmental issues were very important and that things had to be done properly. They were dismayed at the Conservatives' gutting of environmental legislation, including navigation protection and the Fisheries Act and the way the National Energy Board was conducting its hearings. Those were all things that got me energized in the last election. I am a little disappointed, to say the least, at the slow place that the Liberal government has been taking to turn that around.

As to the timeline for this bill, what goes on in the Senate is fairly mysterious to me. I am not going to comment on how rapidly this bill may or may not pass through the Senate. I will just leave it at that.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, in committee, we heard quite a few presentations, and most were favourable to Bill C-88.

We heard from the premier, stating that he was happy with the negotiations on oversight and management of the Beaufort Sea, and that things were going well. Along with Grand Chief George Mackenzie from the Tlicho government, they talked about how they needed to see this move forward through the legislative process and receive royal assent in this Parliament. The negative implications of the status quo would be significant. If the bill is not passed in this Parliament, rising in June, indigenous rights and other federal-territorial initiatives, such as the five-year review of devolution agreements would be compromised.

Does the member agree with the premier and the grand chief that the negative implications of the status quo are significant?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I totally agree that we need to pass this legislation quickly. The part that affects the Mackenzie Valley in particular is attached to a timeline of litigation. We are in an injunction situation right now.

If we do not pass this, that litigation will start up again and continue. If a new government is elected in the fall, it may well appeal this and we will be in this endless cycle of litigation. It is really incumbent on us to pass this quickly.

My comment to the member would be that if the government had tabled this legislation back in the fall of 2017, we could have been done with this legislation, and everybody would be working on other things. Instead, we are here in June 2019 facing the end of Parliament, and this is the result.

It has to be passed, and I hope it will.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to join the parliamentary secretary in wishing the Minister of Intergovernmental and Northern Affairs and Internal Trade a full recovery. I know that everyone in the House is thinking of him and wishing him a full recovery. We hope to see him back here in the fall after the election.

I am going to start my comments on Bill C-88, an act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, with some technical details. Anyone watching CPAC rather than the Raptors tonight will appreciate understanding what the debate is actually about. I will then go broader with my comments and more generally into terms of the current government's approach to the energy industry and, I am going to suggest, the natural resource industry, which is putting us into an incredibly difficult position.

The member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa in Manitoba talked about having the great privilege of spending a lot of time in the Mackenzie Valley. I suspect that there are not many people who have had that opportunity in their lifetime. Therefore, I think it may be a good thing for us all to put on our bucket list, travelling this beautiful country to see some of these beautiful places.

However, I want to talk about the Mackenzie Valley regulation management regime, which was enacted in 1998. It is called the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. It came into being 20 years after the Berger inquiry. It recommended a 10-year moratorium on development in the Mackenzie Valley in order to settle land claims and involve indigenous peoples in modern treaties that provide an integrated, co-managed land and water management regime delivered through a quasi-judicial process for the entire Mackenzie Valley.

The Northwest Territories, in its release, talks about it providing a progressive regulatory environment that integrates and sequences authorizations in one single process. It entrenches indigenous peoples rights and their governments' role and processes. It provides a way to mitigate environmental, economic, social and cultural impacts through conditions set by boards that represent the interests of all NWT residents.

The scope of the MVRMA lays out decisions and functions in a single piece of legislation for federal, territorial and indigenous governments. It eliminates the need for harmonization of substitution agreements and allows for life-of-project regulations from project inception, including conformity of proposals against the land-use plan, environmental screening and assessment to permitting site closure and remediation of major industrial sites. Decision-making is based on lines of evidence that consider science, traditional knowledge, economic impact and mitigation of environmental assessment, and socio-cultural impacts of the project and integration with other resource management legislation, notably the federal and territorial species at risk and broader social economic perspectives.

When we hear that sort of description of the process, I think there are many provinces in the country that perhaps could learn from it. Certainly the territories, in many ways, have moved forward with sort of a tripartite process for environmental assessments that we could all learn from.

As other speakers have noticed, the bill before us really has two parts, and I would say it is the paradox of two very different pieces of legislation that the Liberals have put together. One part is where they are moving back from some measures that we had put in place, which they actually voted for in the last Parliament. I would note that the Liberals voted for Bill C-15 in the last Parliament. They are very critical now, but they certainly did stand up in support of Bill C-15 and now would make some corrections to it.

This is part A of the bill and it is an amendment to the act, Bill C-15, Northwest Territories Devolution Act in 2014. A major component of Bill C-15 was restructuring the three land and water boards in the Mackenzie Valley into one. After this was passed, there were concerns expressed by the Tlicho and Sahtu first nations who filed lawsuits against Canada. In 2015, there was an injunction. The first part is reversing some of the work that was done around the land and water boards.

It is interesting, as we are trying to understand why that change was put in place, that we did have Neil McCrank as a witness. He talked about the process, about the engagement. Contrary to what the member for Northwest Territories indicated, he clearly said he was not given any direction by the then aboriginal affairs minister, Chuck Strahl, but he was asked to engage and come up with what seemed to be a better process.

It was not that this idea of the amalgamation of the water boards came out of the blue; it came through a process of engagement. One thing he said, which was an important piece of information, was that he always contemplated that the land use plans needed to be done first, so that all the land use plans needed to be in place and then the water board would just be a very technical group to deal with the actual assessment, so very technical. What I had not realized is that the land use plans were not in place. However, there was rationale and consultation, but obviously there was also in the end some resistance to that particular section of the bill.

Perhaps a more concerning part of this piece of legislation is part 2 of Bill C-88, clauses 85 and 86. This expands the Liberals' five-year moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the Beaufort Sea. It amends the Canadian Petroleum Resources Act to allow the Governor in Council to issue orders, when in the national interest, to prohibit oil and gas activities and freeze the terms of existing licences to prevent them while the prohibition is in place.

What we have again is the Liberals politicizing the regulatory and environmental process for resource extraction in Canada's north by giving cabinet sweeping powers to stop projects on the basis of national interest. Who defines the national interest? I would suggest it might be Liberal interests in this case defining what is the national interest. It is certainly not national interests.

We have not been alone. We heard from my colleague from the NDP about the terrific concern when President Obama and our Prime Minister were in the United States, when 20 minutes before he was going to make an announcement, he phoned the premiers with 20 minutes' notice. This is not called engagement. It is not called consultation. It is not called discussion. It is called “We are doing this and, by the way, I am giving them 20 minutes' warning, so maybe they can react when the media calls them”.

The premier from the Northwest Territories and many others were scathing in terms of this action by the Prime Minister. They indicated a red alert: the Liberal government of this country wants to turn the north into a park. It does not care about their economic opportunities. It does not care about their future. It sure does not care about engagement and consultations.

We have created in legislation the opportunity for 20-minute phone calls to come any time the government thinks it wants to make a change. With 20 minutes' notice, by the way, Liberals are going to do another moratorium in the national interest. Rightfully, it is absolutely incredible that they are responding to concerns from indigenous communities in part 1 and they are ignoring concerns in part 2, which again is the paradox of this.

I will go to the broader picture, which is what has become incredibly clear over the four years. The government wants to not only shut down our energy industry, it really gives very limited care to our natural resource industry. I will go through a number of measures.

The government is all about superclusters and giving Loblaws fridges, but it does not understand and it does not care about our rural communities, our resource development and the enormous wealth and jobs it provides for the citizens.

Let us start with Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium. The Liberals talked about caring about consultations. How much consultation did they have with the 33 first nations that were represented by Eagle Spirit Energy? They want to build a pipeline in northern British Columbia. Now they cannot do that. There was no consultation. The Liberals arbitrarily said they would put in a moratorium on tankers carrying a specific product.

The Liberals pay no attention to the tankers going from Alaska, down the coast. They pay no attention to the tankers that are coming down the St. Lawrence Seaway, from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. However, they have cut off an opportunity for communities in northern B.C., through the tanker moratorium, to prosper and have a future for their communities.

It is so bad that the Senate took an unprecedented step. Senators were given the opportunity to review the tanker moratorium. They were able to go out and talk to communities. The Senate committee members had an opportunity. Their advice to the government was, to forget it, to get rid of the bill as it was terrible, wrong and unfair. They said it should not move the bill forward.

Unfortunately, Liberal appointed senators are carrying the day. I understand there was great arm-twisting that went on between the government and its senators. I understand the Senate did not take the advice of the committee members who had the knowledge, who talked to the people, who quite frankly did an amazing analysis of what the issues were. The Senate just ignored the committee, and there was arm twisting. It fits with the Liberals' narrative that they do not care about resource development and want to shut down the oil sands.

The next project, energy east. All of a sudden, energy east was going to be—

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if, unlike the last several minutes, we could talk about this bill.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

As mentioned in the past, I often allow hon. members to stray a bit and bring it back. I am sure the hon. member will be talking about the bill shortly, and it will be pertinent to the discussion today.

The hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely talked about the bill. I went from the small picture of the bill and to the broader picture of the philosophy of the government. Obviously it all feeds back into what was a very arbitrary move in part 2 of Bill C-88.

With energy east, new things were imposed on the company that made it uncompetitive. All of a sudden, company representatives had to meet criteria around upstream and downstream emissions. They knew those same criteria were not being imposed on foreign imports. They knew they were putting good money after bad if they continued, so they walked away from the process.

As soon as the Liberals took office, they immediately cancelled northern gateway. The National Energy Board had approved it with conditions and the Liberals just cancelled it. Eventually, we got some very clear guidance from the courts around what needed to be done with indigenous consultation.

The next pipeline on the list was the Trans Mountain. Unfortunately, the Liberals did not bother to do what the courts had told them to do with the northern gateway decision. They were given a recipe and clear directions and they said they would follow that for the Trans Mountain pipeline.

The Liberals have put all their eggs into one basket. I know the Liberals have said they want to shut down the oil sands. They have done everything they can to do so. For some reason, they have decided they will support one pipeline, because they want to play both sides in this debate. They blew the consultation process. We thought they were doing it properly. They talked about how they were putting extra effort into it. However, we found out that the Liberals had not done proper consultations. They did not follow the guidance that was given in the northern gateway decision and they were put back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, the Liberals bought the pipeline. From all accounts, they spent $1 billion too much and then they could not build it.

I want to talk a bit about this pipeline. The Trans Mountain pipeline is going to be very important for my riding for a number of reasons, and I will also link this to the Liberals' lack of concern for natural resources.

We have the softwood lumber dispute, which has now been unsolved since the Liberals took office. I have a community on this pipeline route which has just lost one of its mills. The people in the community are saying to please ensure the Trans Mountain pipeline gets built. They know it will not be a long-term solution but it will see them through. They say that the 18 months of construction for the Trans Mountain pipeline will see them through an incredibly difficult time, from the shutdown of their mill, their forestry industry and loss of over 180 well-paying jobs. Certainly, the Liberals' lack of ability for the softwood industry to get that deal done has impacted that community. Now the people in the community are pleading to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built.

Here we have a bill, one for which the Liberals voted. In part A, they are making some changes to deal with the court issue. However, part B is really about the Liberals' anti-energy position, their anti-natural resources position, their desire to shut down the oil stands and their desire to shut down drilling in the Beaufort.

We all recognize we need to move toward a lighter carbon footprint. However, why should we be importing oil when the demand is there? Technology is going to take us there. Meanwhile, Canada needs to benefit from the opportunities we have. The government is totally uninterested and unwilling to do so.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct the member. She mentioned there were two aspects to this legislation, but there are three. First, it would repeal the restructuring of the superboard. Second, regulatory items negotiated with the Conservative government of the day, which we consider positive, are included. Third, changes are proposed to the Canadian Petroleum Resources Act.

I was very pleased to hear the hon. member talk about the need to listen to people who were impacted. In 2014, the consultant who was hired heard many presentations in the first round of discussions, during which indigenous governments and the Government of the Northwest Territories sat in the same room. All governments there indicated they did not support the changes. There was not one word of support at that time. However, the consultant still chose to recommend that changes be made in three different sections of the bill.

Bill C-88 is an important bill. It is now supported by the Government of the Northwest Territories, which has provided written support. The Tlicho government, the Gwich’in government and the Sahtu government support it. All the impacted indigenous governments, along with the Government of the Northwest Territories, support it.

Now that the member has been reassured that governments in the Northwest Territories support Bill C-88 and that it is positive, will she vote to support it?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to talk about the paradox of the bill. Part 1 has two parts to it. Part 2 has received no consultation. The Governor in Council can impose moratoriums in the national interest. Doing things this way has never happened in our energy industry.

The Liberal government is, without consultation, embedding moratorium measures in legislation, providing governments the ability to be arbitrary in future decisions. Part 2 is fundamentally wrong, in my opinion.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I understood, through committee work, that certain first nations opposed certain parts of the bill. Could the hon. member get into more details on that so we can have a greater understanding of it?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, part 2 of the bill would allow the government, in a very arbitrary way, to take action based on a “national interest” that would only be defined by it, affecting not only indigenous communities in the area but certainly the premier. Given his response when the moratorium happened, we can understand how appalled he was with the utter lack of engagement and consultation on the bill.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, we are primarily here because the previous Conservative government proposed a bill that undermined the constitutional protection of land claims. It is not the first time the Conservatives did this. Of course, they did it with the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, which we had to to fix through Bill C-17. It occurred numerous times, and it is a symptom of a larger issue on which I would like the member to comment.

The Harper government decided to bypass the branch of the justice department, which does constitutional checks on bills. This is very expensive for the taxpayers of Canada, because they pay for that branch of the justice department and its constitutional experts. Of course, these checks resulted in a number of Conservatives' bills being challenged and they lost most of those cases.

How does the member justify the Harper government's decision to bypass the constitutional checks of the Department of Justice?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is absolutely bizarre coming from that side of the House. The Liberals voted for Bill C-15 in the last Parliament; the NDP voted for it. Now they are suggesting that they voted for a bill that is not constitutional. That is quite bizarre.

We presented a bill that we thought would be helpful and would modernize and move things forward in the Northwest Territories. Obviously, there are some challenges that need to be dealt with, but, first of all, Liberals voted for this bill, and second, they threw in something that makes one wonder about the constitutionality of part 2 of this bill.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government is known for making promises and breaking them. I noticed that quite a number of members are also on the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. Again, we see the Liberal government putting together a very different piece of legislation. The hon. member from the other side mentioned there are three parts to the whole thing.

Before taking office, the Liberals promised to table only legislation that stands alone and have now run away from that promise altogether. I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that part of the bill.